WEEKLY COMMENTARY: When Do New Facts NOT Change a Contrary, Strongly-Held Belief?

A bulletin board exhibit entitled "The History of Hand Washing," once on display at Overlook Hospital, illustrates how difficult it can be to change strongly-held beliefs.  It is a story about Dr. Ignaz Semmelwies.

Moral attitudes are especially difficult to change because the attached emotions largely define who we are.  Certain beliefs are so important to us that they become part of how we define our identity.

Dr. Semmelwies was the Chief Resident in surgery at the Vienna General Hospital in 1847.  At the time, the theory of diseases was highly influenced by ideas of an imbalance of the basic "four humors" in the body, for which the main treatment was blood lettings.

At the Vienna General Hospital there were two OBGYN clinics.  Clinic #1 was a broad-ranging teaching service for medical students.  Clinic #2 was exclusively for the instruction of midwives.  At the time, the staff were quite puzzled about a consistent difference in the mortality rates of the two clinics.

A good friend of Dr. Semmelwies died after accidentally being poked with a student's scalpel while performing a postmortem exam.  The autopsy of the deceased friend showed a pathology similar to women in Clinic #1 who were dying of puerperal fever.  The latter is an infection of a woman's placenta following delivery or abortion, sometimes causing death by the infection passing into the bloodstream.

Dr. Semmelwies proposed that there could be a connection between contamination from cadavers and the deadly puerperal fever.  He concluded that he and the medical students carried "cadaverous particles" on their hands from the autopsy room to the patients in OBGYN Clinic #1, causing puerperal fever and the higher incidence of patient deaths than in Clinic #2.  He believed this explained why the student midwives in Clinic #2 (who were not engaged in autopsies and had no contact with the corpses) saw no mortality.

Dr. Semmelwies instituted a policy of using a solution of calcium hypochlorite for washing hands between autopsy work and the examination of patients in Clinic #1.  Mortality rates then dropped dramatically in Clinic #1.

Regardless of these facts, many doctors in Vienna were offended at the suggestion that they should wash their hands.  They felt that their social status as gentlemen was inconsistent with the idea that their hands could be unclean.  As a result, Dr. Semmelwies' ideas were rejected by the medical community.  Perfectly reasonable hand-washing proposals were ridiculed and rejected by Dr. Semmelwies' contemporaries in the 1840's.  The ideas of Dr. Semmelwies were in conflict with established opinions, regardless of being consistent with scientific facts.

It was years after his death that Dr.Semmelwies' hand-washing requirement earned widespread acceptance, when Louis Pasteur developed the germ theory of disease.  Pasteur's experiments demonstrated that organisms such as bacteria were responsible for souring wine, beer and even milk.  Today the process he invented for removing bacteria by boiling and then cooling a liquid (pasteurization) is not in dispute, but it took decades for acceptance.  Today, Dr. Semmelwies is recognized in medical circles as a pioneer in antiseptic policy.

According to the Overlook Hospital exhibit, "Semmelwies Reflex" is a term applied today to a certain type of human behavior characterized by reflex-like rejection of new knowledge when it contradicts entrenched norms, beliefs or paradigms.

For example,when the subject of climate change comes up in conversation today, some people deny the scientific findings which many other people have accepted as true.  Likewise, if we think humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time, can we accept as fact the theory of Evolution?  To believe in Evolution requires some rejection of Biblical teaching, which in turn could cause some believers to fear that they are compromising their deeply-held religious belief system ---- perhaps weakening their long-held belief in God and his power over us.  Furthermore, some might fear that such rejection of Bible teaching would alienate them from their particular social, political or religious group and its values.  Many times it is just that doubters feel that it is actually their established identity and sense of self  that are being challenged by the new information.

We tend to side with people who share our identity.  If a member of our identity group makes a major change in his or her identity beliefs, we might react negatively by calling them a "flip-flopper".   It is as though those who change their minds by accepting new "facts" are in some way being unfaithful to their group.  This can further discourage one from accepting any new facts as "true".

However, people change their minds all the time.  But when the identity stakes are high, achieving that change of mind may be hard to accomplish.  That's why just marshaling objective data and making rational arguments sometimes will not necessarily bring the adoption of new beliefs.

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These thoughts are brought to you by CPC's Adult Spiritual Development Team, hoping to encourage in you some spiritual growth this summer.

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WEEKLY COMMENTARY: Did the Reformation Bring Us Closer to the Bible?

One of the most dramatic chapters in the history of Christianity was the Reformation of the 16th century.  This was a religious movement marked ultimately by rejection or modification of some Roman Catholic doctrine and practice, and the establishment of Protestant churches.

One history of the Reformation suggests that making the Bible directly accessible to "the people" may be compared in its social and cultural effects to a vast irrigation project which provides water to dry land.  "Men's religious natures were provided with life-giving water," it was said.  People could now read their Bibles for themselves and find directly such truths as the sovereignty of God, salvation by faith, and the proper conduct of the Christian life.

Since the Bible was seen as centrally important in all forms of Protestantism, it was not by chance that the Reformation was accompanied by great activity in the translation of the Bible into the various languages of Europe, so that it might be directly accessible to common folk.  Previously, the Bible had been faithfully translated into Latin, but only the well-educated and church people could read Latin.  The interest in language translation was further enabled by the development of modern printing.  Gutenberg built his first printing press in 1450.

Martin Luther was a leader in articulating what would become Protestant thought during the time of the Reformation.  By 1510, Luther had been ordained a priest, but he was deeply troubled by feeling personally alienated from God.  He sought relief through the rigors of becoming a monk and joining a monastery.

For  Luther, the question was:  "How is an unrighteous person (a fallen sinner) made righteous in the sight of God ---- especially, if he or she wants to be admitted to Heaven upon death?"  Luther tried every means in the Roman Catholic system, seeking to put himself "right" with God.  He did not believe he had been successful.

But, as he did further Bible study he began to see that being put "right" with God was not to be earned just by human effort.  Instead, it is a gift from God which sinful mankind alone cannot earn or deserve.  This free grace, Luther concluded, can be achieved only by mankind's inner trust or faith in God.  But mankind must be truly open to receiving this free grace.

Faith, for Luther, was simply an inward act of saying "yes" to God.  It meant turning with trust and loyalty to God as the center and source of one's life ---- dealing directly with God.  This was a new way to look at religion, rendering useless and trivial much of the elaborate medieval Roman Catholic system, where one's priest was one's only route to justification with God.  In 1519, Luther debated publicly with Roman Catholic leaders.  Luther argued that the Scriptures of the Bible are an authority above the Church.  The following year he was excommunicated.

The natural state of mankind, said Martin Luther, is alienation from God ---- proud self-worship.  By man's own acts he would be powerless to save himself.  Luther placed little confidence in the capacity of reason to turn mankind to God.  Because mankind is "fallen," Luther believed, man's reasoning is itself depraved and sinful, and thus leads man away from God.  Faith, not reason, was for Luther the way mankind approaches God.  By "faith," Luther meant neither the use of intellect, nor so-called mystical experiences, but simply by being open to God's grace and love.

For Luther the good news of this reconciliation between mankind and God is revealed to us through the Bible.  Luther believed in directly teaching from the Bible as the final authority in all matters of religion ---- not just following the lessons of tradition, the Church and the Pope.  Luther said that one had only to read the God-inspired pages of the Bible, with an honest and seeking mind guided by one's inner promptings from the Holy Spirit.

The riches of faith to be had in the Bible, in Luther's view, made philosophical speculation unnecessary.  More importantly, having direct accessibility to the Bible leads straight to the doctrine of the "priesthood of all believers," as Luther put it.  Thus, God's truth through Christ is not the exclusive prerogative of a priest or the Pope.  Rather, each person may and must guide their own life by Scripture and right reason, interpreted according to their best judgment.  Finding this truth, or rather being found by it, the Christian is a "free" man, Luther believed.  But a part of the exercise of free will consists in bearing witness to others.  As Luther saw it, "the priesthood of believers" meant not only that every man or woman was their own priest, but also that they were a priest to every other man or woman.

Following Martin Luther's teaching about the supremacy of the Bible, Scripture reading is always part of our worship services at Central Presbyterian Church.  While our Senior Pastor may illuminate the Scripture reading for that day, in the last analysis, as Luther said, it is up to each of us to find within ourselves the intended message of the Scripture passage.  This is the direct word of God ---- no intermediaries required!

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These thoughts are brought to you by CPC's Adult Spiritual Development Team, hoping to encourage you to pursue some personal spiritual growth this summer at CPC.

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WEEKLY COMMENTARY: When Do Gifts of Money Best Help the Poor?

What is the best way to help the poor?  We may face this question several times a day ---- poverty has many faces.

Suppose you encounter a panhandler on the street.  Are you reinforcing a dependency or meeting an urgent need, if you hand him a couple of dollars?  Are you paying for a hot meal or cheap rum?  Is the hand-off of money intended to ease your own sense of guilt that you have so much?  Or, is it perhaps just to let you get safely past him without engaging him personally?  People who say there is an easy answer might be failing to listen to either their head or their heart.

One may feel some personal satisfaction when we think we are helping someone, but can  we help them so much that we have weakened their own desire and ability to gain the freedom of helping themselves as much as they might?  Perhaps we need to ask a few questions, and fine-tune how we should make our loving gift.

I believe in the well-known slogan:  "It is better to teach a man to fish, than to simply give him a meal!"   Giving the meal is very short-term, momentary help.  Teaching him to fish is a gift that keeps on giving, as it will provide him with many future meals.

We need to be smart about how we help people, so as to build up their personal capacity, and thus lessen their dependency on others.

Seeking the "right" balance between help and dependency is not limited to "churchy" situations.  Parents face this dilemma daily with their children.  It often seems easier to do something for the child, instead of patiently waiting for the child to do what is required.  What is age-appropriate child obedience?  Parents often do not agree on this, even within the same family.  I think I was fortunate because I was the eldest child ---- my parents were much more forgiving of my slow learning than they were with my younger brother.  My parents were not what popular literature today calls "helicopter" parents, hovering over their children.  But, they learned from experience and nurtured the long-term goal of developing in each of us as much self-reliance as we were able to handle.

At Central Presbyterian Church, we try to relieve poverty by doing more than just giving donations to poor folks.  In the spirit of trying to "teach the poor to fish," we often look for partners with the skills and programs that teach these "fishing" lessons.  Then we work with the partner by contributing to their financial resources.  For example, in 2017, our CPC Members In Mission Team contributed from the Lena Willis Bequest, to a not-for-profit organization in Morristown named Homeless Solutions, Inc. (HSI).  Our 2017 grant of $20,000 was to help them continue their good work of helping their "guests" rebuild their lives and successfully return to independent living.

Homeless Solutions, Inc. provides emergency shelter and transitional housing in Morristown for the homeless and working poor of that community.  They have been helping those in need for over 30 years, and in 2017 served about 400 people.  But, importantly, HSI provides much more than just shelter!

One of the features of their work is the Family Shelter Program for women and their children, providing case management, independent living skills training, parenting education, counseling, linkages to medical care, child care and transportation.  Over 50% of those entering this program are victims of domestic violence.  Approximately 25 to 30 families, including over 50 children and 20 single women are served each year.

HSI also has a single-men's program, providing shelter for as many as 25 homeless men at one time, with about 100 men served annually.  The Men's Shelter Program provides case management services, including money management training, and assists with benefit enrollment, plus placement in permanent housing.

One other way that HSI "teaches people to fish," is through it's Transitional Housing Program.  The purpose of this program is to support and train families who are making the move to independence.  In order to eradicate the underlying issues associated with recurring homelessness, structured supervision is provided to foster self-sufficiency.  The participants are housed in ten self-contained apartments.

So, what's the answer?  Is merely handing some cash to poor people an adequate way to help them?  It certainly is the most simple for the donor!!  However, CPC does more than just write a check.  We look to fund outside programs designed to change people's lives ---- hopefully moving them closer to self-sufficiency at a better level.  Without CPC's gift and the financial gift of many others, the folks in Morristown's HSI programs would probably not be "learning to fish."  However, HSI can rightly claim that it is giving "a hand-up ---- not just a hand-out."  Many lives would otherwise be stuck in dependency.

CPC, by itself, cannot do the on-going, face-to-face work undertaken by HSI.  And HSI does not have the financial resources to undertake their programs alone.  But, working together, CPC and HSI can make a long-term difference in the lives of many people.  We would not accomplish this if we merely handed out gifts of money directly to the poor.

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These thoughts are brought to you by CPC's Adult Spiritual Development Team, hoping to encourage you to pursue some personal spiritual growth this summer at CPC.

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